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The Taliban were removed from power in Afghanistan by US-led forces in 2001, but the group has seized control of the country once again following a rapid offensive.

The capital, Kabul, was the last major city to fall to the offensive that began months ago but accelerated as the hardline Islamists gained control of territories.

The group entered direct talks with the US back in 2018, and in February 2020 the two sides struck a peace deal that committed the US to withdrawal and the Taliban to preventing attacks on US forces. Other promises included not allowing al-Qaeda or other militants to operate in areas it controlled and proceeding with national peace talks.

But in the year that followed, the Taliban continued to target Afghan security forces and civilians, advancing rapidly across the country.

Rise to power

The Taliban, or "students" in the Pashto language, emerged in the early 1990s in northern Pakistan following the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan. It is believed that the predominantly Pashtun movement first appeared in religious seminaries - mostly paid for by money from Saudi Arabia - which preached a hardline form of Sunni Islam.

The promise made by the Taliban - in Pashtun areas straddling Pakistan and Afghanistan - was to restore peace and security and enforce their own austere version of Sharia, or Islamic law, once in power.

From south-western Afghanistan, the Taliban quickly extended their influence. In September 1995 they captured the province of Herat, bordering Iran, and exactly one year later they captured the Afghan capital, Kabul, overthrowing the regime of President Burhanuddin Rabbani - one of the founding fathers of the Afghan mujahideen that resisted the Soviet occupation. By 1998, the Taliban were in control of almost 90% of Afghanistan.

Afghans, weary of the mujahideen's excesses and infighting after the Soviets were driven out, generally welcomed the Taliban when they first appeared on the scene. Their early popularity was largely due to their success in stamping out corruption, curbing lawlessness and making the roads and the areas under their control safe for commerce to flourish.

But the Taliban also introduced or supported punishments in line with their strict interpretation of Sharia law - such as public executions of convicted murderers and adulterers, and amputations for those found guilty of theft. Men were required to grow beards and women had to wear the all-covering burka.

The Taliban also banned television, music and cinema, and disapproved of girls aged 10 and over going to school. They were accused of various human rights and cultural abuses. One notorious example was in 2001, when the Taliban went ahead with the destruction of the famous Bamiyan Buddha statues in central Afghanistan, despite international outrage.

Pakistan has repeatedly denied that it was the architect of the Taliban enterprise, but there is little doubt that many Afghans who initially joined the movement were educated in madrassas (religious schools) in Pakistan.

Pakistan was also one of only three countries, along with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which recognised the Taliban when they were in power in Afghanistan. It was also the last country to break diplomatic ties with the group.

At one point, the Taliban threatened to destabilise Pakistan from areas they controlled in the north-west. One of the most high-profile and internationally condemned of all Pakistani Taliban attacks took place in October 2012, when schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai was shot on her way home in the town of Mingora.

A major military offensive two years later following the Peshawar school massacre greatly reduced the group's influence in Pakistan though. At least three key figures of the Pakistani Taliban had been killed in US drone strikes in 2013, including the group's leader, Hakimullah Mehsud.

Al-Qaeda 'sanctuary'

The attention of the world was drawn to the Taliban in Afghanistan in the wake of the 11 September 2001 World Trade Center attacks in New York. The Taliban were accused of providing a sanctuary for the prime suspects - Osama Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda movement.

On October 7, 2001, a US-led military coalition launched attacks in Afghanistan, and by the first week of December the Taliban regime had collapsed. The group's then-leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, and other senior figures, including Bin Laden, evaded capture despite one of the largest manhunts in the world.

Many senior Taliban leaders reportedly took refuge in the Pakistani city of Quetta, from where they guided the Taliban. But the existence of what was dubbed the "Quetta Shura" was denied by Islamabad.

Despite ever higher numbers of foreign troops, the Taliban gradually regained and then extended their influence in Afghanistan, rendering vast tracts of the country insecure, and violence in the country returned to levels not seen since 2001.

There were numerous Taliban attacks on Kabul and, in September 2012, the group carried out a high-profile raid on Nato's Camp Bastion base.

Hopes of a negotiated peace were raised in 2013, when the Taliban announced plans to open an office in Qatar. But mistrust on all sides remained high and the violence went on.

In August 2015, the Taliban admitted they had covered up Mullah Omar's death - reportedly of health problems at a hospital in Pakistan - for more than two years. The following month, the group said it had put aside weeks of infighting and rallied around a new leader in the form of Mullah Mansour, who had been the deputy of Mullah Omar.

At around the same time, the Taliban seized control of a provincial capital for the first time since their defeat in 2001, taking control of the strategically important city of Kunduz.

Mullah Mansour was killed in a US drone strike in May 2016 and replaced by his deputy Mawlawi Hibatullah Akhundzada, who remains in control of the group.

Seizing power

In the year following the US-Taliban peace deal of February 2020 - which was the culmination of a long spell of direct talks - the Taliban appeared to shift their tactics from complex attacks in cities and on military outposts to a wave of targeted assassinations that terrorised Afghan civilians.

The targets - journalists, judges, peace activists, women in positions of power - suggested that the Taliban had not changed their extremist ideology, only their strategy.

Despite grave concerns from Afghan officials over the government's vulnerability to the Taliban without international support, the new US president, Joe Biden, announced in April 2021 that all American forces would leave the country by 11 September - two decades to the day since the felling of the World Trade Center.

Having outlasted a superpower through two decades of war, the Taliban began seizing vast swathes of territory, before once again toppling a government in Kabul in the wake of a foreign power withdrawing.

They swept across Afghanistan in just 10 days, taking their first provincial capital on 6 August . By 15 August, they were at the gates of Kabul.

Their lightning advance prompted tens of thousands of people to flee their homes, many arriving in the Afghan capital, others heading for neighbouring countries.

The Taliban's return to rule brings an end to almost 20 years of a US-led coalition's presence in the country.

More on this story

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The Taliban were removed from power in Afghanistan by US-led forces in 2001, but the group has seized control of the country once again following a rapid offensive. The capital, Kabul, was the last major city to fall to the offensive that began months ago but accelerated as the hardline Islamists gained control of territories.

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NEARLY 60m people were forcibly displaced across the world by conflicts in 2014 (either within their own countries, or to other nations as refugees). It is the highest number ever recorded according to a new report by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and equivalent to the population of Italy. The figure is 8.3m higher than in 2013, driven mainly by the war in Syria, the advance of IS in Iraq and resurgent conflicts in Africa.

The number of refugees grew from 11.6m to 14.4m (excluding 5.1m Palestinians) over the same period globally, the biggest annual increase seen since 1990. Syria is now the main source country of refugees, overtaking Afghanistan, which had held that unenviable position for more than 30 years. By the end of the year, 3.9m Syrian refugees had fled (a sixth of its population), and another 100,000 have left so far this year. Of the ten largest source countries in 2014, six are African. Continuing conflicts in Somalia, South Sudan, Congo and the Central African Republic are taking a heavy toll. Eritreans are fleeing their repressive country in droves, often via neighbouring Ethiopia. Despite a population of only 6m, Eritrea is the second-biggest source country of illegal crossings by sea to the European Union after Syria. And the rise in the number of conflicts worldwide has made it harder for people to go home. Over 6m refugees have been in exile for five years or more and only 126,800 returned to their home countries last year, the lowest number in 31 years.

The impact of Syria's war is being felt everywhere, especially in the neighbouring region. Syrians have poured into Turkey-which has become the main destination country for refugees, superceding Pakistan-with 1.6m refugees in 2014. And people are still arriving: by June this year this had risen to 1.78m. Neighbouring Lebanon and Jordan also host huge numbers of Syrians: as a share of its own population Lebanon bears the biggest burden in the world, with 232 refugees per 1,000 inhabitants. Jordan is next at 87 and Nauru, where many migrants to Australia are held, is third-highest with 39. The economic burden falls disproportionately on poorer countries. Around 85% of all refugees are living in developing countries compared with 70% twenty years ago.

The number of people displaced within their country's borders grew by almost 5m in 2014 to 38.2m. Syria has the largest number of IDPs, with 7.6m, 20% of the global total. In Colombia, the 50-year-old civil war continues to exact a heavy price. Some 136,000 people were displaced in 2014, swelling the total to 6m, the second-largest number anywhere. Another 360,300 Colombian refugees left the country in the same year. Meanwhile, the advance of IS in Iraq drove 2.6m Iraqis from their homes.

Some 1.47m new asylum applications were made globally in 2014, 50% more than the previous year. Of those, 171,200 were by Syrians. But the largest number by far were by Ukrainians: 288,600 people applied for asylum, 271,200 of whom did so in Russia. Germany received 173,100 new applications and is relatively welcoming, accepting a large proportion of asylum-seekers. Other EU countries are less welcoming. On June 17th Hungary announced plans to build a fence along its 175-km border with Serbia to deter migrants, mainly from Kosovo. The spike in global applications has exacerbated the backlog: nearly 1.8m applicants were still awaiting a decision compared with 1.2m in 2013. All in all, a grim picture.

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NEARLY 60m people were forcibly displaced across the world by conflicts in 2014 (either within their own countries, or to other nations as refugees). It is the highest number ever recorded according to a new report by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and equivalent to the population of Italy.

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How the Taliban rose to power in Afghanistan

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How the Taliban rose to power in Afghanistan

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The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is an independent, nonpartisan member organization, think tank, and publisher.

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Social Education 66(1), pp. 8-12
©2002 National Council for the Social Studies

Carol Tell

From the cover of Time magazine to the top stories on CNN and other networks, Afghan women have caused a stir in the U.S. media. The White House, too, has declared them a "top priority," signaled by Laura Bush's mid-November radio address in which she told of their adversity. We read about their plight, long-suffering victims of the most appalling forms of human rights abuses. We marvel at their tenacity, their ability to organize themselves and to look to the future with courage and hope. We learn with pleasure that the new government has two women in its cabinet: Suhaila Siddiq as health minister and Sima Samar as women's affairs minister. As the U.S. public learns more about these women's lives—what they were like under the Taliban rule and what they might become—the role of the social studies educator becomes, once again, crucial.

That students need to know about the women of Afghanistan is clear. The challenge for educators comes less from teaching the facts than answering and engendering difficult questions. How do we address such clear and abhorrent abuses of rights while maintaining respect for cultural differences? How can classroom discussions move beyond the sensationalized details of violence to a deeper understanding of social, political, and historical factors? Can Afghan women inform our students, not only about the need for human rights in their country, but also about the role of democracy and citizenship in our own?
Becoming "Invisible"
Nasrine Gross, an Afghan American and a leading activist in the Afghan women's cause (see interview, page 13), remembers being a student at Kabul University in 1965:

Many of us went there with a chadari or scarf, with full backing of our families and official authorities; we studied with boys in the same class and had many male teachers; we wore short skirts, pale nylons, high-heeled shoes, with make up on our faces and polish on our nails; we moved about freely and without an escort, and we chose our physicians ourselves. ¹

When Gross returned to Afghanistan in August 2001, everything had changed. Women were forbidden to participate in all these activities: forbidden to go out without their full-length burqa, to study with males (or to study at all after age eight), to wear make up or high-heeled shoes, to go outside without a male escort. How did conditions change so drastically?

Women's rights in Afghanistan have been eroded during more than twenty years of war, from the time that the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979. With the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, civil war erupted, during which time law was almost nonexistent and women experienced much violence and discrimination. Between 1992 and 1996, under the rule of President Burhanuddin Rabbani, the country continued in a full-scale civil war. When the Taliban captured Kabul in 1996, under the leadership of Mullah Mohammed Omar, they established the "Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan." The Taliban regime ended most factional fighting, but women's rights were restricted in ways that were severe, steadfast, and systematic.

The Taliban, which began as a religious movement of students educated in Pakistan and Afghanistan and emerged as a military force in 1994, justified all their actions as fundamental to the Islamic faith; their treatment of women, they said, adhered to the teachings of the Koran. But Ahmed Rashid, author of Taliban, argues that their edicts had no validity in the Koran; indeed, the Prophet Mohammed's first task was to emancipate women. ² Rashid looks to other factors as the real causes behind their misogynistic policies.

The Taliban leaders were all from the poorest, most conservative and least literate southern Pashtun provinces of Afghanistan. In Mullah Omar's village, women had always gone around fully veiled and no girl had ever gone to school because there were none. Omar and his colleagues transposed their own milieu, and their own experience, or lack of it, with women to the entire country and justified their policies through the Koran. ...The Taliban's uncompromising attitude was also shaped by their own internal political dynamics and the nature of their recruiting base. Their recruits—the orphans, the rootless, the lumpen proletariat from the war and the refugee camps—had been brought up in a totally male society. In the madrassa [an Islamic school] milieu, control over women and their virtual exclusion was a powerful symbol of manhood and a reaffirmation of the students' commitment to jihad [religious struggle]. Denying a role for women gave the Taliban a kind of false legitimacy amongst these elements. ³

Of course, women were not the only victims of oppression under Taliban rule. Men were also restricted and brutally punished for disobeying the Taliban's edicts, which included a ban on listening to music and watching movies and television, forced haircuts for Afghan youth, and an order for men to grow full beards and to pray five times daily. Homosexuality was also a crime, punishable by death. Non-Muslims were under constant threat as well, forced to wear badges to differentiate themselves from the majority Muslim population. In addition, seemingly harmless recreational activities, such as kite-flying, were banned in certain regions because the activities were considered un-Islamic.

Yet the Taliban decrees, broadcast regularly on Radio Shariat, limited all aspects of women's lives. The list of rules was long and, by contemporary standards, cruel: Women could be beaten, or worse, for having non-covered ankles, for laughing loudly, or for wearing nail polish. The law even forbade women from making noise with their shoes when they walked; in an interview, the head of the ministry explained, "Women are duty-bound to behave with dignity, to walk calmly and refrain from hitting their shoes on the ground, which makes noises." ⁴

Offenses were monitored and punished by the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice—the "Religious Police"—whose forms of discipline became notorious. The police wielded leather batons, steel cables, and whips, and used them against men, women, and children who made any number of infractions. Women were beaten publicly for such offenses as showing too much skin (wrists or ankles), wearing the wrong colored socks, lacking a male escort, educating girls, working, and begging. Many women adjusted their behavior so they wouldn't get beaten. One woman said,

I stayed home. I only went to the bazaar with a chadari and came back fast. We were scared to look around. We heard that women were beaten for having their hand out or for having nail polish. People live in fear. If one is punished, everybody fears being the next. ⁵

Enforced brutally during Taliban rule, the main restrictions against women in Afghanistan fell into the following general categories.

The Burqa

The most visible, though not the most debilitating, aspect of control was the requirement that women wear the burqa (sometimes referred to as the chadari), a head-to-toe covering with a mesh opening for the eyes. Although the long-standing place of the burqa in Afghan culture is complicated—many women wore the burqa before the Taliban edict—at the time when Nasrine Gross was in college, for example, wearing the garment was voluntary. Journalist Richard Lacayo described the health risks:

The heavy cloth covering can induce panic, claustrophobia and headaches. It's a psychological hobbling for women that is akin to Chinese foot binding. It's also life threatening. Try negotiating a busy Kabul street—around donkey carts, careening buses and the Taliban roaring by in Datsun pickups—when your hearing is muffled and your vision is reduced to a narrow mesh grid. ⁶

Under Taliban law, women could be beaten—and often were—if they even
lifted up the veil in public.

General Suhaila Siddiq, Afghanistan's only woman general and now the new health minister, criticizes Westerners, however, for focusing on the burqa when denouncing the Taliban's abuse of women. The burqa should not be the core concern. "The first priority should be given to education, school facilities, the economy and reconstruction of the country,'" said Siddiq. ⁷ Soraya Parlika, an Afghan female activist, agreed: "The burqa is not the main problem of women . . . . First women should find work and improve their economic situation." ⁸

Male (or Mahram) Accompaniment

In addition to wearing the burqa in public at all times, women had to be escorted by a male relative—usually a brother, husband, or father. This restriction often created problems for widows who had no mahram living with them or for women whose mahram were not often at home. Even if a women was ill and needed to go to hospital, for example, she was not allowed to leave the home without a male escort. One woman described,

My husband hailed a taxi to take my child and me to the hospital. Five minutes later, a Religious Police car stopped the taxi. He made me get out of the taxi. . . . There were three Taliban. One of them beat the driver with a yellow cable that was pretty wide. I was scared. He asked me why the holes in my chadari were so big? . . . I put my child away in the car and told them, "Beat me, but do not hurt the child." He beat me. I hid my face. He hit me several times—on the back and arms. I had bruises. ⁹

Employment

With the exception of health care workers, women were not allowed to be employed outside the home. This restriction contrasted with life in Afghanistan before the Taliban, in which 70 percent of all teachers, 60 percent of all civil servants, and 40 percent of all medical doctors were women. Unable to make a living, many women and families became impoverished and destitute.

Education

Girls over eight years old were not permitted to go to school. In addition, many boys had to stop their education because so many of their teachers were women and therefore no longer allowed to work. Those boys who did continue their schooling found the curriculum changed; Islamic teachings dominated, with only one class a week devoted to such subjects as math and science. ¹⁰ Girls from well-off families often were sent to Pakistan, Iran, or Tajikistan to be educated.

Interestingly, Afghan women seemed most resistant to the education ban, often risking punishment to send their daughters to secret schools. Many educated women, frequently former teachers, set up these home schools for girls, often with the help of international aid. If the Religious Police became aware of the schools, they were shut down; often, the husbands were pressured to make their wives stop teaching.

One woman principal in Kabul described her experience teaching underground for five years. Her home school, set up in her father's house, began with only two boys and two girls in attendance but grew to as many as 180 students, ages 4-17. Classes were staggered, ongoing from morning until night. Girls who attended the school remember hiding their books underneath their burqas. ¹¹ The Christian Science Monitor reported similar initiatives in Taloqan, in the North, in which an aid group called the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan helped as many as 16,000 girls gain access to education. ¹²

The importance of education, both for themselves and for their children, is often expressed by Afghan women:

I wish I had gone to school so that I could read and write. I cannot even read the letters my brother sends from Iran, where he lives with his family. I want my daughters to study so that they can learn something that could be of use to them, for example, to become doctors. ¹³

Health Care

Women's health was greatly affected by the Taliban's rule, both through their specific edicts restricting women's access to medical facilities and doctors, and through their general policies restricting women's opportunity for healthy standards of living. First, there was the challenge for women not only to get to the hospital (a mahram was necessary), but also to receive sufficient medical attention once there. Only female doctors, few in number, were allowed to fully examine and treat female patients. Male doctors were not allowed to give a thorough physical exam to female patients, who had to wear the full burqa at all times; male doctors could be imprisoned for talking to a female patient who was not fully covered. Women doctors were segregated from their male colleagues as well, which meant that they could not seek help or advice when needed.

Apart from these specific medical restrictions, women's health in Afghanistan has not been good: The life expectancy for an Afghan woman is 44 years old. In 1998, The Journal of the American Medical Association published a study assessing the health conditions of women living in Kabul under the Taliban. ¹⁴ One hundred sixty women participated, eighty of whom were still living in Kabul (the others had recently migrated to Pakistan). The women completed a survey of 101 questions, most of which focused on physical and mental health.

The majority of women reported a decline in physical and mental health (71 percent) and a decline in access to health care (62 percent). Many women experienced symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (42 percent), depression (97 percent) and anxiety (86 percent). They reported harassment, physical abuse, and restricted activity, all of which added to their decline in health. Many reported having been beaten by the Religious Police for such offenses as not wearing the burqa, not covering enough of their bodies, wearing stylish clothing, making noise when they walked, not being accompanied by a chaperone, and entering a public building through a designated male entrance. Even those who hadn't been physically abused feared the possibility. Sixty-two percent responded that they were worried about being detained and abused by the Taliban when they left their homes.
A Promising Future?
With a new interim government in place, many Afghan women, living in Afghanistan and abroad, are hopeful for the future. Certainly, the appointment of two women to the thirty-member governing council is a sign that women will have a political voice in the new Afghanistan. In Kabul, reopened stores selling books, videos, and kites signify a return to a more open society. And for the first time since the fall of the Taliban, a small acting troupe in Kabul performed a play for an audience of about one hundred, including Minister for Women's Issues Sima Samar.

Yet Afghanistan's reconstruction will be slow and expensive, requiring the assistance of the international community. As post-Taliban Afghanistan faces enormous political, social, and economic challenges, women's rights remain a fragile, if fundamental, prospect. Many Afghan women bear deep psychological as well as physical scars. But with the commitment of a new government, the help of women's organizations and international agencies, and the fortitude of many extraordinary female leaders, the women of Afghanistan—along with the rest of the country—can begin to heal.
Teaching Ideas
The following activities provide ways of bringing Afghan women's experiences into the classroom.

* The idea of moral relativism, that moral standards are grounded in social customs, has been debated for centuries and still as controversial today. Some argue that there is an ideal standard of absolute morality (against killing, for example), whereas others believe that the "right way to act" depends on the context, tradition, and handed-down values of a particular culture; therefore, we should not judge another society according to our own cultural bias.

* Ask the class to debate the issue of moral relativism, using the experience of women in Afghanistan as one example. Have students come up with and research other examples. What are the dangers of making quick judgments about another culture because it is different from ours? What are the dangers of having an "anything goes" attitude? A useful website to help students understand the term can be found in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy (www.utm.edu/research/iep/m/m-relati.htm).

* Some critics argue that we should focus more on education, employment, and health care than on the burqa when addressing the conditions of Afghan women. But the relationship between women's freedom and women's clothing is an interesting one. Ask students to research a historical period in the United States and determine the status of women during that time. Have them report on how women's clothing adapted to or reflected the political or social climate. How did the corset, for example, restrict women in ways that were not only immediate and physical, but also symbolic? What happened to women's dress during the 1920s, and how did the change correspond to changing attitudes toward women? What about today?

* Have students write letters to local, state, or national politicians, explaining what they think should be done to help the women of Afghanistan. Make sure that students research not just the issues but also the politicians and assess how they might respond to their requests. Keep a log of responses. Students may also be given the option to write a letter to the editor for a local newspaper or a magazine, or a brief essay.

* Before the war and the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, Afghan women had received much less U.S. media attention. After the war has ended, the media may again move on to reporting on other "hotter" topics.

* Have your students research another group of people that has been "dropped" from the media's radar screen. Ask students, either independently or in groups, to present their research to the class. Along with learning the facts about the group, students may want to consider how U.S. foreign policy initiatives influence what the media reports and how they choose to report it. Encourage students to continue updating their research throughout the year. Topics could range from AIDS victims to war refugees to victims of child labor or domestic abuse.
Notes
1. See www.erols.com/kabultec.

2. Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism in Central Asia (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), 107.

3. Ibid., 110-111.

4. Ibid., 106.

5. Available on the Human Rights Watch website: hrw.org/reports/2001/afghan3/
afgwrd1001-.05.htm.

6. Richard Lacayo, "About Face for Afghan Women," Time (November 25, 2001). Available at www.time.com.

7. Stephen Farrell, "West's Feminists Under Fire from Female General," The Times (November 28, 2001). Available at www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,2001540008-2001551489,00.html.

8. Terry McCarthy, "Stirrings of a Women's Movement," Time 158, no. 24 (December 3, 2001). Available at www.time.com.

9. Available on the Human Rights Watch website: hrw.org/reports/2001/afghan3/afgwrd1001-.05.htm.

10. Keith B. Richburg, "Textboooks with a Subtext: 'Ahmed Has a Sword,'" The Washington Post (November 19, 2001): A14.

11. Lucian Perkins, "For Girls, Education without Fear," The Washington Post (November 18, 2001): A20.

12. Lucian Kim, "Tenacity under Afghan Burqas," Christian Science Monitor (July 19, 2000). Available at www.csmonitor.com.

13. Available on the Human Rights Watch website: hrw.org/reports/2001/afghan3/afgwrd1001-.05.htm.

14. Zohra Rasekh, Heidi Bauer, M. Michele Manos, and Vincent Iacopino, "Women's Health and Human Rights in Afghanistan," The Journal of the American Medical Association 280 (August 5, 1998): 449-455.

Carol Tell is senior editor of Social Education.
Glossary of Terms
Burqa (or burka): Veil. The head-to-toe covering with a mesh grid over the eyes. Required garb for all women during the Taliban regime.

Hajj: Annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca.

Mahram: A close male relative, such as a brother, father, or husband.

Mujahidin: "Those who struggle." In Afghanistan, the term refers to the forces that fought the Soviet-backed regimes.

Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice ("the Religious Police"): Enforced Taliban restrictions against women and others through means that included arbitrary and humiliating beatings.

Sharia (or shariat): Islamic law.
Websites Negar—Support of Women in Afghanistan www.users.erols.com/kabultec Afghan Women's Mission www.afghanwomensmission.org Beneath the Veil www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/presents/index.veil.html Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) rawa.fancymarketing.net Women's Alliance for Peace and Human Rights in Afghanistan (WAPHA) www.wapha.org Women on the Road for Afghanistan www.worfa.org

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Social Education 66(1): The Woman of Afghanistan

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Social Education 66(1), pp. 8-12 ©2002 National Council for the Social Studies Carol Tell From the cover of Time magazine to the top stories on CNN and other networks, Afghan women have caused a stir in the U.S. media.

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SION TOUHIG/GETTY IMAGES

In the streets of Kabul, you can see something these days that has not been glimpsed there for almost five years--women's faces. Now that the Taliban has fled the city, a few brave women have shed the burka--the head-to-toe garment, to Western eyes a kind of body bag for the living, made mandatory by the defeated religious leadership. Men sometimes look in astonishment at these faces, as if they were comets or solar eclipses. So do other women. From the moment in 1996 that the Taliban took power, it sought to make women not just obedient but nonexistent. Not just submissive but invisible. For five years, it almost succeeded.

The Taliban's ongoing collapse guarantees at least some improvement in the lives of Afghan women. They are emerging from the houses that they once could not leave except in the company of a male relative. Some are returning to the jobs they had to give up when the Taliban barred them from all employment except for a small number of health-care jobs dedicated to women. Even more remarkable, Kabul's sole television station now features a woman announcer. In a country where people were required to paint their windows black so that passersby could not see the face of any woman who might be at home, the announcer appears onscreen without a veil.

But just as the meltdown of Taliban military power has not brought real peace to Afghanistan, neither has the disappearance of its hated religious police brought women freedom overnight. Afghan society is tribal and conservative. Except for a small minority of educated professionals in Kabul, women have long been relegated to a subservient role. In rural areas of northern Afghanistan that are under the control of the Northern Alliance, the burka is still universal, though no law requires it. Even in Kabul, where Western-style skirts were not uncommon before the Taliban, many women say the burka is the least of their concerns. Dr. Rahima Zafar Staniczai, head of the Rabia Balkhi hospital for women, remembers how Taliban religious police would beat her in the street any time they caught her rushing to work uncovered: "They would hit us and spit on us, and then we would have to come in to the hospital to do our work." All the same, she says, what women wear is a secondary issue. She lists the real priorities. "First we need peace. Then we need a central government. Then we need education. After all that, we will be in a position to make a decision on the burka."

And even when something like peace and order returns to Afghanistan, just how sympathetic to the rights of women the next ruling order will be, no one can yet say. Women have not suffered the systematic oppression under the Northern Alliance that was the signature of Taliban rule. But the years the Alliance ruled all Afghanistan, 1992 to '96, are remembered by many Afghans for the brutality of the warlords. Some Alliance leaders are as hostile to notions of women's equality as any Taliban mullahs.

If the future is uncertain, the recent past is an all-too-well-substantiated fact. The Taliban made Afghanistan a laboratory for the systematic oppression of women. What it did will haunt that nation and the world for years to come.

The Women Speak
To westerners, the most visible symbol of the Taliban's oppressive regime was the order that placed all women under the burka. Its long-standing place in Afghan culture is complicated. Many rural women, especially, claim to wear it willingly, at least when they speak in the presence of their husbands. There is even high fashion in burka wear. In Kabul, women allow a bit of lace trimming to show at the edge. The best burkas, from the Afghan city of Herat, have exquisite pleating that imparts a shimmering, watery feel but takes hours to iron.

But nearly any educated woman you speak to loathes the burka. So do many less educated ones--if you can question them where men cannot hear. The heavy cloth covering can induce panic, claustrophobia and headaches. It's a psychological hobbling of women that is akin to Chinese foot binding. It's also life threatening. Try negotiating a busy Kabul street--around donkey carts, careening buses and the Taliban roaring by in Datsun pickups--when your hearing is muffled and your vision is reduced to a narrow mesh grid.

What are Afghan women really like beneath the burka? Talk to three from Dasht-i-Qaleh, a tiny, impoverished village long held by the Northern Alliance. Though the Taliban's restrictions against women have no force here, nearly all the women wear the burka. Long-standing cultural tradition exercises its own police power. And though these women have agreed to speak to TIME correspondent Hannah Beech, they will do so only through a female interpreter. They worry that their husbands might object if they learned that a man was present at the interview. During the conversation, a man does briefly enter the room. The women all hasten to cover their faces and turn toward the wall until he leaves.

On the streets, you would never know that these silent, shapeless forms, encased in these shrouds, have any views at all. But outside the earshot of men, the women are fierce, alive and opinionated. And when they shed their burkas, they turn out to be wearing brightly colored dresses. All three say they would prefer not to wear a burka or even a head scarf but fear they would be harassed. Zora, 28, says she has heard that when women go to Mecca on the hajj, the pilgrimage that all Muslims are enjoined to attempt at least once, they do so with faces uncovered. "If women can show their faces in Islam's most holy place, then why must we cover ourselves in Afghanistan?" she asks.

Like the others, Saida, 27, received no formal education, although her three daughters are enrolled in elementary school. Saida says her eldest daughter Nahid, 12, is getting ready for her betrothal to a 26-year-old farmer and does not have much time to spare for morning instruction. Besides, says Saida, Nahid tells her she learns at school that the Koran teaches her how to be a good wife and mother, instruction that exasperates Saida. "How can the Koran teach you how to live your life, how to take care of your children and your husband?" she asks. So Saida teaches her girls the really important things--how to cook, sew and soothe a husband's ego. "Teaching my daughters how to make their husbands comfortable is the most important thing," she says, "because if a husband is not comfortable, then the woman's life is hell."

"My husband says the Koran tells him he can control his wife however he wants," says Banaz, 32, a mother of seven. ("Five boys," she says, jubilantly. "Only two daughters.") "But I have read the Koran, and nowhere does it say this. He is lying to me." Still, Banaz can do nothing. If she disobeys her husband, he will beat her, as he has done many times before. Once, she claims, he hit her chest so hard that she could not breast-feed her daughter for a week.

The conversation turns to the routine brutalization of women in Afghanistan. Banaz says that four years ago her sister was raped by a soldier of the Northern Alliance, but only the women in the family know about it. Women in Dasht-i-Qaleh call rape "lying down" because it is so common that lying down quietly is the best way for a woman to cope. In a society that permits men several wives, the second or third wives, who tend to be younger and prettier, are vulnerable to rape by other males in the family. Banaz says this happened to her sister, who was 14 when she was married off as the third wife of a local landowner. "It was a good marriage for the family," says Banaz. "But it was not a good marriage for her." She was raped by her husband's brother, a local mullah, whose prominence means that Banaz's sister has no hopes of retribution; it is her word against a holy man's. "In Afghanistan, the men go off to war," says Banaz, "but it is the women who fight their whole lives."

The Years of the Whips
In the 1960s and '70s, Afghanistan was a typical developing country, poor and struggling, with a slowly expanding role for women. By 1964 they had been granted the vote. The cities had begun to produce a small elite of educated women, who entered the professions, wore Western skirts and mixed comfortably with men. The Soviet invasion in 1979 was a disaster for Afghanistan generally. But under the Russians, women's rights were protected--even advanced to a degree that alienated some in Afghanistan's tradition-bound society. More women were introduced into government, given an authority that many men found unnerving. Shaima Yunsi was a senior aide to the Interior Minister, Afghanistan's internal spymaster. "I was responsible for collecting information on the jihad warriors" who fought the Russians, she says. She likes to show a photo of herself from those days; in it she wears a green army uniform with a pistol tucked under her belt.

As bad as the Russians' occupation was, the chaos that followed their withdrawal in 1989 was worse, especially for women. Afghan warlords brought terror to the urban neighborhoods and villages they laid claim to. Young, undisciplined fighters treated women as plunder; rape became commonplace. Civil war broke out among factions of the victorious anti-Soviet resistance. With the triumph of the Taliban in 1996, conditions were in place for a final degradation of Afghan women.

The Taliban restored order to Afghan cities, but it was order of a sinister kind. Most of the leadership and the fighters were Pashtun tribesmen from rural areas of the south around Kandahar. In some respects, the harshness of their treatment of women was their attempt to extend across all Afghanistan the primitive social order of their villages at home. And it allowed the leadership to claim that Taliban rule had conferred on its male warriors a new degree of authority. The nation was a shambles, but at least the women were firmly under control.

The rules were enforced capriciously, sometimes ferociously, by religious police from the Orwellian-named Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. Ministry thugs wielding lengths of steel cable would beat women in the street for infractions like wearing white socks. "If women are going outside with fashionable, ornamental, tight and charming clothes," an early decree from the ministry warned, they "should never expect to go to heaven."

It is hard to find a woman in Kabul now who does not remember a beating at the hands of the Taliban. As it consolidated power, its orders became increasingly bizarre and sadistic, based on its extreme interpretations of Koranic instructions. One of these demanded punishment for women who allowed their shoes to make noise when they walked down the street. But this surreal pettiness masked real misery. The ban on work for most women had a disastrous effect on schooling for both sexes, since as many as 70% of all Afghan teachers were women. Excluding them from the classroom meant that boys had few teachers to instruct them.

The work ban extended to widows, who were left no recourse but to beg. In a nation with as many as a million widows--out of a population of just 20 million--that decree alone produced a silent disaster. Sabza Gul, 32, now begs at the Kabul bus station and makes about 50[cents] on a good day. Some years ago, when she was still living in a village north of the city, her husband went blind. The family became dependent on whatever money their son Humayoun, 17, could earn as a field worker. The fields were close to the occasional fighting between Taliban and Northern Alliance forces. Eight months ago he was killed by a stray rocket. "There is no work for women," Sabza says. "We had nobody to look after the family, so I came to Kabul." Now that the Taliban is gone, she will try to find work cleaning offices or homes.

All schooling was forbidden to girls over the age of eight. A recent U.N. report estimated that at most 7% of Afghan girls were enrolled in school, compared with roughly half the boys. In Peshawar, the Pakistani city near the border to which many Afghan refugees have escaped, Masooda is a shy second-grade girl--but she is 16. She left school five years ago, on the day the Taliban entered her central Afghan town of Kota Sangi and beat her with a cane for not wearing a burka. When her family fled to Pakistan two weeks ago to escape U.S. bombing, she finally resumed lessons. "I once knew how to read, but I've forgotten everything," she says. "I'm ashamed to be so much older than everyone else."

For those who stayed home, determined mothers have found ways to get schooling for their daughters. Rawshan and Nasima, both 30, are married to the same man, Abdul Qadir, 55, a porter in a Kabul market who makes about $1 a day. Rawshan has one son and three daughters by Abdul. Nasima has one son and two daughters. Desperately poor, they live in a house peppered with bullet holes. For the past two years, Rawshan's eldest daughter Wahida, 10, has been going to a secret school in an abandoned building. She has only one hour of lessons a day, given by local women who volunteer their services, but she is slowly picking up the rudiments of math and learning how to read. "I would like my daughter to work outside the home," says Rawshan. "I stayed in the home, and I have had a terrible life."

Next to education, women's health suffered the worst consequences of religious rule. The life expectancy of Afghan women now is just 44 years. There are 17 maternal deaths per 1,000 live births, the second worst rate in the world, just behind war-ravaged Sierra Leone. The statistics only hint at what medical care for women is like in a nation where a male doctor is not allowed to give a thorough physical examination to a female patient. Women had to be examined wearing the full burka. Male doctors sometimes had to stand in a hallway shouting instructions to a female assistant. A doctor could be imprisoned for talking to a female patient who was not fully covered.

Dr. Sima Samar left Afghanistan in 1984 but runs two hospitals in Afghanistan as well as 10 clinics from her base in Quetta, Pakistan. "There was a lot of harassment from the Taliban," she says. "They would enter the hospital at 1 in the morning saying they had received a report that our female staff was not dressed properly or was talking with the male staff."

What Next?
Even with the final defeat of the Taliban, when and if that occurs, Afghan women will remain in a vexed position. The forces vying to take the Taliban's place are not always friendly to women. Within the Northern Alliance, there is a fundamental split between Western-minded technocrats and conservative religious figures. Abdullah Abdullah, the Alliance's media-savvy Foreign Minister, is a technocrat. In his speeches he makes sure to point out that in Alliance-held areas women go to school. He goes so far as to support women's joining the government.

Not so Alliance President Burhanuddin Rabbani, once a foremost proponent of expanding the burka's reach across Afghanistan. More recently, Rabbani allowed to an interviewer that "wearing a head scarf is enough in the cities." But in the Northern Alliance stronghold of Faizabad, his acolytes make sure that all women are completely covered. "Rabbani is better than the Taliban," says Farahnaz Nazir, a women's rights activist in the Northern Alliance town of Khoja Bahauddin. "But he is still very conservative. He does not believe that women are equal."

That attitude extends into the rank and file. Zulmai is a Northern Alliance soldier lounging on a tank in the town of Farkhar. Ask him how many brothers he has, and he proudly tells you four, all soldiers. Ask how many sisters, and he says none. Press him repeatedly, and he finally admits to three. Why did he deny them? "Because girls are not important." He shrugs. "They do not count."

This helps explain why the signals being sent to women by Alliance forces in Kabul are so mixed. Though they re-opened a movie theater there last week for the first time since the Taliban took power, women were not admitted. A brief street demonstration last week by women who wanted to march to the U.N. headquarters in Kabul to demand equal rights was blocked by the police, who claimed they could not guarantee the security of the protesters.

In recent weeks the Bush Administration, in cooperation with the British government of Prime Minister Tony Blair, has opened a public relations assault to point up the oppression of women under Taliban rule. Two weeks ago, Laura Bush delivered what is ordinarily the President's Saturday radio address to speak about the problem. "What this initiative has done is send a signal," says Jim Wilkinson, director of the Coalition Information Center, the White House office that coordinates the Administration's worldwide anti-Taliban message. "By talking about the problem, we're hopefully able to affect the solution as they set up the new Afghan government," he notes.

In Washington two weeks ago, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and the President's Special Counselor, Karen Hughes, met with Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority, and Mavis Leno, who has long worked to bring attention to the problems of Afghan women. "We asked the Administration to make returning women to equal status under the law a nonnegotiable issue in forming any new government," says Leno, wife of Tonight Show host Jay Leno. "That's pretty much the language Colin Powell used when he spoke at the State Department [last week], so it appears the government is going to do exactly that."

Or try to do. Afghanistan is famously resistant to outside interference. Ask the Russians. "When the Soviets came, they wanted to change the country overnight, abandoning tribal codes that existed for centuries," says Nelofer Pazira, an exiled Afghan journalist and dedicated foe of the Taliban who stars in the film Kandahar (see box). "People were appalled. They went completely in the opposite direction. Even more liberal families became very conservative."

No matter what other nations may think, in the end it will be up to the Afghans to find a new balance of genders in their society. Progress is likely to be slow, particularly outside the educated elites of Kabul. Even there it will be subject to the complex forces of coercion, family pressure and tradition. Mohammad Halim, who runs one of Kabul's best-known burka shops, says he has no plans to offer a wider variety of clothing. "It will only be in Kabul where women will take off their burkas. Elsewhere women will continue wearing them. This is a very old custom in Afghanistan." That very day, says Halim, more than a week after the Taliban fled the city, he sold 20..

Maybe Halim has not counted on the number of girls who think like Mashal. At 18, she wants to be a doctor. "I want to be freed from Allah," she says. "I don't want to wear a veil at all. I want to wear miniskirts." And he may not be counting on the determination of women like Fakhria, 35, a mother of four in Kabul. After the Taliban forced her from her job at a teacher-training college, she opened a secret beauty salon in her house in Kabul. A high wall shields her customers from prying eyes. Inside are pictures of female models torn from Pakistani magazines. On shelves beside a large mirror, she has a selection of lipsticks, eyeliners and hair sprays. In the West they would be commonplace. In a society that forbids them, they seem weirdly precious.

With the Taliban gone, Fakhria hopes to open a storefront salon. No blackened windows anymore to hide the forbidden faces. She also wants to go back to her teaching job. "I can make more money in a salon," she says. "But I want to pass on knowledge."

There is one kind of knowledge that all Afghan women can pass on now--what it was like to be trapped in a society that, however briefly, perfected their imprisonment.

— Reported by Hannah Beech/Dasht-i-Qaleh; Hannah Bloch and Matthew Forney/Islamabad; Terry McCarthy/Kabul; Jeff Chu/London; Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles; Alex Perry/Mazar-i-Sharif; Tim McGirk/Spin Boldak; Leigh Anne Williams/Toronto; and John F. Dickerson/Washington

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women; afghanistan; taliban; burka; islam;

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Breaking News, Analysis, Politics, Blogs, News Photos, Video, Tech Reviews - TIME.com

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In the streets of Kabul, you can see something these days that has not been glimpsed there for almost five years--women's faces. Now that the Taliban has fled the city, a few brave women have shed the burka--the head-to-toe garment, to Western eyes a kind of body bag for the living, made mandatory by the defeated religious leadership.

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Landlocked and mountainous, Afghanistan has suffered from such chronic instability and conflict during its modern history that its economy and infrastructure are in ruins, and many of its people are refugees.

The Taliban, who imposed strict Islamic rule following a devastating civil war, were ousted by a US-led invasion in 2001 but have recently been making a comeback.

The internationally-recognised government set up following the adoption of a new constitution in 2004 has struggled to extend its authority beyond the capital and to forge national unity.

Nato-led foreign combat troops had the main responsibility for maintaining security after 2001, and the formal end of Nato's combat mission in December 2014 was followed by an upsurge in Taliban activity.

See Afghanistan in pictures

Read more country profiles - Profiles by BBC Monitoring

FACTS

LEADERS
President: Ashraf Ghani
President Ghani, right, heads a unity government along with former rival and now chief executive Abdullah Abdullah, left. He was sworn in as president in September 2014.

He replaced Hamid Karzai, who led the country for twelve years after the Taliban were overthrown in 2001.

MEDIA

Media outlets - private TV stations and newspapers in particular - mushroomed following the ousting of the Taliban in 2001.

Some 27 per cent of households have at least patchy access to the internet and computer literacy and ownership rates are low.

Read full media profile

TIMELINE
Some key dates in Afghanistan's history:
1979 - Soviet Army invades and props up communist government. More than a million people die in the ensuing war.

1989 - Last Soviet troops leave. US- and Pakistan-backed mujahideen push to overthrow Soviet-installed Afghan ruler Najibullah triggers devastating civil war.

1996 - Taliban seize control of Kabul and impose hard-line version of Islam.

2001 - US intervenes militarily following September 11 attacks on the United States. Taliban are ousted from Kabul and Hamid Karzai becomes head of an interim power-sharing government.

2002 - Nato assumes responsibility for maintaining security in Afghanistan.

2004 - Loya Jirga adopts new constitution which provides for strong presidency. Hamid Karzai is elected president.

2014 - Ashraf Ghani elected president. NATO formally ends its combat mission in Afghanistan, handing over to Afghan forces, who face a growing insurgency.

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Landlocked and mountainous, Afghanistan has suffered from such chronic instability and conflict during its modern history that its economy and infrastructure are in ruins, and many of its people are refugees. The Taliban, who imposed strict Islamic rule following a devastating civil war, were ousted by a US-led invasion in 2001 but have recently been making a comeback.

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Photos of Soviet Occupation of Afghanistan

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Photos of Soviet Occupation of Afghanistan

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Nearly twenty-five years ago, the Soviet Union pulled its last troops out of Afghanistan, ending more than nine years of direct involvement and occupation. The USSR entered neighboring Afghanistan in 1979, attempting to shore up the newly-established pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. In short order, nearly 100,000 Soviet soldiers took control of major cities and highways. Rebellion was swift and broad, and the Soviets dealt harshly with the Mujahideen rebels and those who supported them, leveling entire villages to deny safe havens to their enemy. Foreign support propped up the diverse group of rebels, pouring in from Iran, Pakistan, China, and the United States. In the brutal nine-year conflict, an estimated one million civilians were killed, as well as 90,000 Mujahideen fighters, 18,000 Afghan troops, and 14,500 Soviet soldiers. Civil war raged after the withdrawal, setting the stage for the Taliban's takeover of the country in 1996. As NATO troops move toward their final withdrawal this year, Afghans worry about what will come next, and Russian involvement in neighboring Ukraine's rebellion has the world's attention, it is worth looking back at the Soviet-Afghan conflict that ended a quarter-century ago. Today's entry is part of the ongoing series here on Afghanistan.

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The Soviet War in Afghanistan, 1979 - 1989

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Nearly twenty-five years ago, the Soviet Union pulled its last troops out of Afghanistan, ending more than nine years of direct involvement and occupation. The USSR entered neighboring Afghanistan in 1979, attempting to shore up the newly-established pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. In short order, nearly 100,000 Soviet soldiers took control of major cities and highways.

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How the Soviet Union Took over Afghanistan

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How the Soviet Union Took over Afghanistan

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After World War II, as both the United States and the Soviet Union competed for global power, Afghanistan increasingly turned to the Soviet Union for support after the United States established military ties with Pakistan in 1954, according to an October 2001 report from Human Rights Watch.

The Soviets in return used the strategic location of Afghanistan, at the juncture of Asia and the Middle East, to counter the U.S. alliance with Pakistan and the surrounding Persian Gulf states.

The Soviets entered Afghanistan in 1979 with the aim of establishing a key position in Asia, one with trade possibilities and access to Gulf oil, Barnett Rubin said in his book, "The Fragmentation of Afghanistan."

At the time, Afghanistan was a vulnerable monarchy. It was led by King Zahir Shah, who, like his predecessors, was unable to merge the existing tribal society with a central government. This separation of the Afghan elite and the central government from local tribal leaders eventually caused a revolt against the monarchy.

The Saur Revolution of April 1978 in which the Afghan communist party, the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, seized power in a coup and killed the country's prime minister, also created space for a foreign invasion into a country that lacked a legitimate government.

Soon after their entry into Afghanistan, the Soviets imposed military and social reforms that began to make enemies within different sectors of the indigenous population. They initiated land reforms that troubled tribal leaders. They implemented economic measures that worsened conditions for the poor, and tried to curb ethnic uprisings by mass arrests, torture, executions of dissidents and aerial bombardments, according to a November 2001 Amnesty International report.

According to Amnesty International, some 1 million Afghans died during this period, with more than 8,000 people were executed after being put on trial between 1980 and 1988.

The crackdown led to resistance by Mujahadeen, or Afghan freedom fighters, who were backed by the United States. In 1988, Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev, who called the occupation of Afghanistan a "bleeding wound," withdrew his forces from the country.

Afghan divisions
Several events in Afghanistan's history led up to the Soviet invasion and the civil war that followed the withdrawal.

In 1967, the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, which was the only structured political party in Afghanistan at the time, separated into two rival factions - the more radical "Khalq" that took a traditional view of Marxist ideology, and the "Parcham" that believed in a gradual movement toward socialism for the pre-industrialized Afghanistan.

While the PDPA had initially unified to overthrow the monarchy, which the group believed practiced elitist politics that didn't include the Afghan people, rivalries and differences over ideology led to hostilities between the group's two factions.

On April 27, 1978, the PDPA was able to overthrow the monarchy. The leader of the Khalq faction, Muhammad Taraki became president and renamed Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.

By late 1978, however, a rebellion against the Taraki government's policies started an Islamic extremist movement in eastern Afghanistan and spread throughout the country, leading to civil war. Violence increased and Taraki was killed the same year in a palace shootout by rebel groups, according to a May 2006 U.S. State Department report.

Hafizullah Amin, Taraki's deputy prime minister, assumed power.

However, Oleg Grinevsky, a former Soviet ambassador to Sweden, said in his book "The Secrets of the Soviet Diplomacy" that the Soviet Union's intelligence agency the KGB, which was monitoring Afghanistan after the invasion, released information claiming that Amin was incapable of sustaining power and that his radical Marxist policies would cause greater instability in the country.

Other reports by the KGB stated that Amin's loyalty toward the Soviet Union was false and that he was an American spy. As such, they needed to replace him with a more pro-Soviet leader who would gain popular support in Afghanistan, Grinevsky wrote.

Amin was in power for 104 days before he was assassinated by KGB agents wearing uniforms of the Afghan Revolutionary Central Committee, according to the CIA document, "Predicting the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan".

Soviet entry and the resistance
The Soviet-Afghan Friendship Treaty signed in December 1978 by Amin permitted military assistance and advice to Afghanistan if requested.

Citing the treaty and with the aim of solidifying an ally in Asia, Soviet ground forces took control of Afghanistan in December 1979 and appointed as head of state, former deputy prime minister and leader of the Parcham faction of the PDPA, Kamal Barbak.

In an effort to resist the Soviet occupation and the spread of Marxist ideology to Afghanistan, the United States - then at the height of a nuclear arms race with the Soviets and fearing a southward movement toward the oil-rich Persian Gulf - soon partnered with Pakistani intelligence to recruit and train guerilla fighters, known as the Mujahadeen, who could put up a resistance against the Soviet army.

Both parties "overestimated the threat posed by the other superpower in Afghanistan," Rubin told CNN in March 1999.

The resistance was a success. By the early 1980s various Mujahadeen groups were fighting against Soviet forces and pro-Soviet Afghan government troops.

The United States' donation of anti-aircraft missiles to the Mujahadeen fighters caused major losses to Soviet aircraft and troops.

The United States also expressed its opposition to the Soviet occupation by boycotting the Olympics in Moscow in 1980.

Two years later, the U.N. General Assembly called for withdrawal of Soviet forces.

By November 1986, amid continuing hostilities between the Mujahadeen and Soviet forces, Barbak was ousted as prime minister by the Soviets for ineffectiveness and replaced by the former chief of the Afghan Secret Police, Mohammad Najibullah.

But Najibullah also was unable to control the Mujahadeen, and when the Geneva Accords, overseen by the United Nations and guaranteed by the United States and the Soviet Union, were signed in April 1988, they effectively ended the war.

The treaty, signed by the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan, outlined a policy of non-interference and contained a timeline for the withdrawal of Soviet troops.

The Soviets began withdrawing from Afghanistan in May 1988 and were gone by February 1989.

The Afghan civil war
Despite the Geneva Accords and the withdrawal of Soviet forces, civil war continued in Afghanistan as the Mujahadeen continued to fight the government of Soviet-backed Najibullah.

The resistance ousted Najibullah in 1992 and installed the Taliban government whose hard-line policies ended the fighting.

The 10-year civil war in Afghanistan caused a drain on the country's economy and led many Afghans to flee to neighboring Pakistan, where many remain in 2006.

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After World War II, as both the United States and the Soviet Union competed for global power, Afghanistan increasingly turned to the Soviet Union for support after the United States established military ties with Pakistan in 1954, according to an October 2001 report from Human Rights Watch.